Games review – N3: Ninety-Nine Nights II is a nightmare

In what could be the least anticipated release of the year, Konami unleashes Ninety-Nine Nights II – the only question is exactly how bad is it?

Ninety-Nine Nights II (360) – you’ll be lucky to last that many minutes

We’ve indicated our mild surprise at some sequels lately, as such unremarkable games as Kane & Lynch and H.A.W.X. squander follow-ups that they never really justified in the first place. We’re willing to bet considerable amounts of Monopoly money though, that this will forever remain the most unwarranted, uncalled for and downright undeserved sequel ever made.If you’re lucky enough to be unaware of the original Ninety-Nine Nights it was an instantly repetitive and impossibly shallow Dynasty Warriors clone. For those not familiar with Dynasty Warriors either that means a level of shallowness that makes Paris Hilton look like an Oxbridge don.One obvious excuse for the game’s foibles is that it’s meant solely for the Japanese market, where Dynasty Warriors remains one of the most successful franchises in the country. Except this is inexplicably an Xbox 360 exclusive and one whose story and visuals have been made ‘darker, more mature’ in exactly the way many Japanese developers assume Westerners prefer.According to the badly lip-synched cut scenes The Lord of the Night is on the warpath. Although his hordes of monsters are able to make mincemeat of ordinary humans the game’s five fashion-impaired heroes are able to take on whole armies themselves.Like Dynasty Warriors this a third person beat ’em-up where the primary gimmick is that there are hundreds of enemies on screen at once. But as is usual for this peculiar genre most of these bad guys just mill around in front of you as smaller groups timidly poke at your defences, before becoming instant attack combo fodder as soon as you move against them.Given the scale of the battles the game’s graphics are quite good and the novelty of cutting through the enemy ranks like a Tolkien-esque lawnmower is initially quite fun. By which we mean you’ll only get bored about halfway through the first mission.Although the other four characters are gradually unlocked as you progress, and have very different looking movesets, they’re all controlled by the same intensely tedious button mashing. Apart from pointing yourself in vaguely the right direction no more advanced thought or motor skill is needed than continuingly smashing the same buttons over and over again.This doesn’t imply the game is easy though, far from it. Checkpoints and health power-ups are few and far between and many enemies delight in knocking you to the ground and then sending you sprawling again the instant you get up.But perhaps the most galling feature is that even if you are masochistic enough to trawl through the hours of mindless combat needed to get to an end-of-level boss you often aren’t powerful enough to beat them. So instead you’re forced to replay earlier missions to earn the extra experience points necessary to level up and have a fighting chance.We already feared lasting psychological damage from playing through some of the levels the first time; being forced to level grind through them a second or even third time is so unpleasant an experience it feels more like some CIA-concocted alternative to waterboarding.There is also a multiplayer mode where you get to compete with a friend to slaughter the most enemies. Mercifully the servers haven’t been turned on yet (or nobody was playing, it was hard to tell) but we feel confident in predicting that the option wouldn’t have saved the game – although it might well have ruined some good friendships.We’re just glad we escaped the whole sorry mess with our sanity still relatively intact.In Short:Impossibly tedious Dynasty Warriors clone that offers up not one ounce of entertainment for enduring its soul-shatteringly dull world and combat.Pros:The graphics and music aren’t bad, at least in comparison with the rest of the game. More moves per character than usual for a Dynasty Warriors game.Cons:An insult to mindless entertainment, with horrendously repetitive combat and level grinding. Generic story and not enough checkpoints or health.Score:2/10Xbox 360, £29.99 (cert 18)Publisher: KonamiDeveloper: Q Entertainment/feelplusRelease Date: 10th September 2010